I'm curious. How has its history been "thoroughly" destroyed? Have all mentions of it been erased from memory and recorded history? How does an American invasion negate or falsify everything we've ever learned about the Babylonians, or what we know about British rule and partition in the last century? Have all the archaeological remnants sunk into the sand, never to be seen again? If that's the case, I suppose we've also completely destroyed the histories of France, Germany, and Italy?
And also, you're mis-intrepetting the GP. "Much more than just troop loss" means that he is considering other factors.
If you say you're totally uninformed, I guess you're right. But I doubt it. There are House, Gubernatorial, and Senate races to be decided today, but there are also some state, and possibly even some local races to decide as well. Even if you don't know or care about Congressional or state politics, there might still be something local that you can voted on in an informed manner. School board, city council, County Judges or Prosecutors, etc. Is even one of those candidates too (corrupt|dishonest|stupid|busy|conservative|libera l) to be good for your city? Slashdot is almost guaranteed not to know about truly local politics. It's up to you go vote on those things. We can't. We don't even get the chance.
Interesting insights. Just out of curiousity, do you put Bill Clinton in the same category? It also makes for an interesting contrast between Leiberman and H.R. Clinton. Lieberman being concerned about violent videogames I understand and believe. He strikes me as generally sincere. That and he has a history on the subject. Clinton jumping on the bandwagon just looks political and reactive.
We could even go one better and reform the Health System as a whole. Costs are ridiculously high - much higher than they should be, even with inflation taken into account. In the case of the pharmaceutical companies, this is somewhat understandable, but I'm still skeptical about the "we have to recoup our investment" argument. Surely there's something else they do to improve marginal profits - like re-arranging the cost structure - rather than making their medicines ridiculously or even prohibitively expensive. For example, why are there so many sexual dysfunction drugs on the market right now? What's the ROI on those drugs and their ad campaigns, compared to the ROI on medicines that treat life-threatening illnesses? I understand the necessity of bearing some of the costs of drugs to treat diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, heart disease, AIDS, etc. Ditto on psychotropics. The research on treating illnesses that can end in death is one thing. Research into elective procedures and elective medicines seems frivolous.
Like the education system, the price structure is broken. The system is so expensive that we all have to get help paying. Some of us pay. Others never do. Those who never pay (and shouldn't and won't be refused treatment on that basis) are paid indirectly for by the rest of us. I don't have a problem with that. People who get hurt should get medical attention. The problem is that the prices seem too high to only be covering those who can't pay. Those of us with some capacity to pay must still rely on insurance companies and government aid to help pay for the really expensive stuff. (More and more, that seems like all of it).
This is just an opinion, but it seems to me that as long as we can rely on someone else to paying our sticker-shock-inducing medical (or college tuition, for that matter) bills, we won't make enough of a stink about the prices to see them change. In a free-market economy, competition and the possibility that the consumer won't buy at all help to keep prices reasonable. In the case of prescription drugs and medical attention, however, it's hard to "not buy" because most of the time, you really need to make a purchase of some kind if you're shopping at all. One can put off the purchase because one can't afford it (I'm thinking specifically of prescription drugs and times in the past when I've had to choose between food and medicine), or find a less expensive or comprehensive solution, but this only pushes the problem under the rug. Sometimes, it resurfaces in a more severe form than before.
Give the (proto?)-vaccine to the patients and the bullets to the greedy bastards who complain about the cost of drug development while spending craploads of money on branded promotional trinkets.
I thought the joke with Borat was that the British believe all Americans to be ignorant rednecks. When the British make fun of themselves, they're funny. When they make fun of us, they quickly become annoying. Same thing with John Leguizamo, David Chappell, or Jeff Foxworthy. They're funny because they're making fun of what they know. Not so with Sacha Baron Cohen. He's a British peer who's made a movie about the stupid Colonials. I'll pass.
I don't remember one way or the other, but I wouldn't discount the possibility at all, considering all the money they made off of QDOS (everything between MSDOS 1 and Windows ME) and what they actually paid for it.
I think they've known about them for years and have always held them in suspicion of programming in BASIC without paying for it. I'm not surprised they didn't want them to be able to 're'-install Vista.
http://blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.htm l
Ah, yes. Google-bombing for politics! This must be the "My candidate's opponent is a poopy-faced dumb-head" of the 21st century. What's next? "My candidate can beat up your candidate?"; "I'm my ball, so I make the rules?"; "Your candidate has cooties?"
Wait wait wait... No trial by jury? At all? Ever? I had no idea things had gotten like that. I suppose I was remembering the Jolly Old England of Dame Thatcher, assuming y'all had things like jury trials both then and now, and categorizing the UK as free.
Q replies: What have I got to do with any of this, you ridiculous mortal? I was on the other side of the Universe playing 3-D star-cluster checkers with the Squire of Gothos. I do enjoy taking his pieces and watching them go nova. But if you really want me to do something about this, I suppose I could. Just make sure Jean-Luc doesn't hear about this. I can't abide his pedantry.
Quoth the poster: You base your life around ideals from the 1700s?
You mispelled "things said".
So you're more free as a citizen of a constitution-less government than we are as Americans? Perhaps you can name your country so we can compare notes without resorting to guess-work and hypothesis?
The only reasonably free country I can think of that doesn't have an effective constitution is the United Kingdom. There's no one document, but as I understand it (poor benighted colonial that I am) English Common Law has only been accruing for the last 800 years. The Americans of 2006 are no more identical in daily life and broader outlook to our Forefathers of the 18th century than are today's British subjects identical to those ruled by the Plantaganets. I can't remember exactly who was on the throne in 1206, except that he or she had to have been related to Henry I.
Those words could easily come out of the mouth of many characters in the Tragedies and Histories. I mistook it for Shakespeare, too.
Romeo to Tybalt Tybalt to Mercutio and vice versa MacDuff as he kills that Scotsman we don't talk about in theatres Hamlet killing Claudius Hamlet killing Polonius Hamlet killing Laertes Laertes Killing Hamlet Whoever kills Richard III I can't remember the primary Cause of Death in Lear or Othello, but there has to be at least one fatal, non-self-inflicted stabbing in each.
Technically, Shakespeare invented some of his vocabulary. Other playwrights and poets of the time did likewise. Milton did it. I daresay Marlowe and Thomas Kidd did as well. Not to mention the Metaphysical and Cavalier poets. Those whose writings have survived were educated men, some had traveled, none were bound by any dictionary or even standardized spelling. They borrowed or made up the words they needed, then helped the players understand what they meant. If the language is beautiful and horrific (I can agree that it's both), it is partially The Bard's doing.
I didn't mean to suggest that children (or two-year olds, specifically) don't display learned behaviors. Obviously, they do. They learn all the time. I said boundary pushing is an innate behavior (or characteristic, depending on one's point of view) and therefore does not need to be learnt. If anything, it needs to be partially un-learnt during maturation toward adulthood.
Quoth: Kids need to learn to push boundaries . . .
I disagree on this specific point. They don't need to -learn- to push boundaries. They do that innately. If you have any doubts, watch a two-year old. Older children may be more subtle about it, but they still do it, and likely in an inappropriate fashion. Perhaps that's one of the hallmarks of the progression from infancy to adulthood: pushing all available envelopes (as in infant or toddler) and gradually learning which boundaries to push, when to push them, and with how much force (as an child->adolescent->adult).
If they are not pushing parents or teachers (though it's very likely that they will), then they will push each other or themselves. Watch kids on a swing-set sometime. Eventually, they will start competing with themselves or each other to see who can swing the highest or jump the farthest from the moving swing. It may not be anti-authoritarian boundary-pushing, but it is boundary-pushing. It may not be safe, but neither is base-jumping or driving a car.
Slashdot Mirror
Some clarification please:
"including its history"
I'm curious. How has its history been "thoroughly" destroyed? Have all mentions of it been erased from memory and recorded history? How does an American invasion negate or falsify everything we've ever learned about the Babylonians, or what we know about British rule and partition in the last century? Have all the archaeological remnants sunk into the sand, never to be seen again? If that's the case, I suppose we've also completely destroyed the histories of France, Germany, and Italy?
And also, you're mis-intrepetting the GP. "Much more than just troop loss" means that he is considering other factors.
Laws likely to cause heartburn?
Leela: You know how much an [military base] that big would cost on the Sun?
And I totally forgot ballot initiatives (where applicable) - local taxes, smoking bans, bond issues, land annexations, etc.
If you say you're totally uninformed, I guess you're right. But I doubt it. There are House, Gubernatorial, and Senate races to be decided today, but there are also some state, and possibly even some local races to decide as well. Even if you don't know or care about Congressional or state politics, there might still be something local that you can voted on in an informed manner. School board, city council, County Judges or Prosecutors, etc. Is even one of those candidates too (corrupt|dishonest|stupid|busy|conservative|libera l) to be good for your city? Slashdot is almost guaranteed not to know about truly local politics. It's up to you go vote on those things. We can't. We don't even get the chance.
To quote Gil Grissom: "There are too many forensics shows."
Interesting insights. Just out of curiousity, do you put Bill Clinton in the same category? It also makes for an interesting contrast between Leiberman and H.R. Clinton. Lieberman being concerned about violent videogames I understand and believe. He strikes me as generally sincere. That and he has a history on the subject. Clinton jumping on the bandwagon just looks political and reactive.
We could even go one better and reform the Health System as a whole. Costs are ridiculously high - much higher than they should be, even with inflation taken into account. In the case of the pharmaceutical companies, this is somewhat understandable, but I'm still skeptical about the "we have to recoup our investment" argument. Surely there's something else they do to improve marginal profits - like re-arranging the cost structure - rather than making their medicines ridiculously or even prohibitively expensive. For example, why are there so many sexual dysfunction drugs on the market right now? What's the ROI on those drugs and their ad campaigns, compared to the ROI on medicines that treat life-threatening illnesses? I understand the necessity of bearing some of the costs of drugs to treat diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, heart disease, AIDS, etc. Ditto on psychotropics. The research on treating illnesses that can end in death is one thing. Research into elective procedures and elective medicines seems frivolous.
Like the education system, the price structure is broken. The system is so expensive that we all have to get help paying. Some of us pay. Others never do. Those who never pay (and shouldn't and won't be refused treatment on that basis) are paid indirectly for by the rest of us. I don't have a problem with that. People who get hurt should get medical attention. The problem is that the prices seem too high to only be covering those who can't pay. Those of us with some capacity to pay must still rely on insurance companies and government aid to help pay for the really expensive stuff. (More and more, that seems like all of it).
This is just an opinion, but it seems to me that as long as we can rely on someone else to paying our sticker-shock-inducing medical (or college tuition, for that matter) bills, we won't make enough of a stink about the prices to see them change. In a free-market economy, competition and the possibility that the consumer won't buy at all help to keep prices reasonable. In the case of prescription drugs and medical attention, however, it's hard to "not buy" because most of the time, you really need to make a purchase of some kind if you're shopping at all. One can put off the purchase because one can't afford it (I'm thinking specifically of prescription drugs and times in the past when I've had to choose between food and medicine), or find a less expensive or comprehensive solution, but this only pushes the problem under the rug. Sometimes, it resurfaces in a more severe form than before.
Give the (proto?)-vaccine to the patients and the bullets to the greedy bastards who complain about the cost of drug development while spending craploads of money on branded promotional trinkets.
I thought the joke with Borat was that the British believe all Americans to be ignorant rednecks. When the British make fun of themselves, they're funny. When they make fun of us, they quickly become annoying. Same thing with John Leguizamo, David Chappell, or Jeff Foxworthy. They're funny because they're making fun of what they know. Not so with Sacha Baron Cohen. He's a British peer who's made a movie about the stupid Colonials. I'll pass.
I don't remember one way or the other, but I wouldn't discount the possibility at all, considering all the money they made off of QDOS (everything between MSDOS 1 and Windows ME) and what they actually paid for it.
I think they've known about them for years and have always held them in suspicion of programming in BASIC without paying for it. I'm not surprised they didn't want them to be able to 're'-install Vista. http://blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.htm l
I didn't think of that. I guess I'm not cut out for Campaign Manglement.
Ah, yes. Google-bombing for politics! This must be the "My candidate's opponent is a poopy-faced dumb-head" of the 21st century. What's next? "My candidate can beat up your candidate?"; "I'm my ball, so I make the rules?"; "Your candidate has cooties?"
Bugs are a good source of protein. They're features!
One borrowed:
To be or not to be?
One original:
"Get the hell out, three-eyes."
I see your point. If there are exceptions to the right, it's become a privilege. Thanks for the info. I hope y'all can put things right.
Wait wait wait... No trial by jury? At all? Ever? I had no idea things had gotten like that. I suppose I was remembering the Jolly Old England of Dame Thatcher, assuming y'all had things like jury trials both then and now, and categorizing the UK as free.
Q replies: What have I got to do with any of this, you ridiculous mortal? I was on the other side of the Universe playing 3-D star-cluster checkers with the Squire of Gothos. I do enjoy taking his pieces and watching them go nova. But if you really want me to do something about this, I suppose I could. Just make sure Jean-Luc doesn't hear about this. I can't abide his pedantry.
Quoth the poster: You base your life around ideals from the 1700s? You mispelled "things said". So you're more free as a citizen of a constitution-less government than we are as Americans? Perhaps you can name your country so we can compare notes without resorting to guess-work and hypothesis? The only reasonably free country I can think of that doesn't have an effective constitution is the United Kingdom. There's no one document, but as I understand it (poor benighted colonial that I am) English Common Law has only been accruing for the last 800 years. The Americans of 2006 are no more identical in daily life and broader outlook to our Forefathers of the 18th century than are today's British subjects identical to those ruled by the Plantaganets. I can't remember exactly who was on the throne in 1206, except that he or she had to have been related to Henry I.
Those words could easily come out of the mouth of many characters in the Tragedies and Histories. I mistook it for Shakespeare, too.
Romeo to Tybalt
Tybalt to Mercutio and vice versa
MacDuff as he kills that Scotsman we don't talk about in theatres
Hamlet killing Claudius
Hamlet killing Polonius
Hamlet killing Laertes
Laertes Killing Hamlet
Whoever kills Richard III
I can't remember the primary Cause of Death in Lear or Othello, but there has to be at least one fatal, non-self-inflicted stabbing in each.
Then there's Titus Andronicus . . .
|ri h4v0( & l33t sl1p teh d@wgz 0f w@rz!
Technically, Shakespeare invented some of his vocabulary. Other playwrights and poets of the time did likewise. Milton did it. I daresay Marlowe and Thomas Kidd did as well. Not to mention the Metaphysical and Cavalier poets. Those whose writings have survived were educated men, some had traveled, none were bound by any dictionary or even standardized spelling. They borrowed or made up the words they needed, then helped the players understand what they meant. If the language is beautiful and horrific (I can agree that it's both), it is partially The Bard's doing.
I didn't mean to suggest that children (or two-year olds, specifically) don't display learned behaviors. Obviously, they do. They learn all the time. I said boundary pushing is an innate behavior (or characteristic, depending on one's point of view) and therefore does not need to be learnt. If anything, it needs to be partially un-learnt during maturation toward adulthood.
Quoth: Kids need to learn to push boundaries . . .
I disagree on this specific point. They don't need to -learn- to push boundaries. They do that innately. If you have any doubts, watch a two-year old. Older children may be more subtle about it, but they still do it, and likely in an inappropriate fashion. Perhaps that's one of the hallmarks of the progression from infancy to adulthood: pushing all available envelopes (as in infant or toddler) and gradually learning which boundaries to push, when to push them, and with how much force (as an child->adolescent->adult).
If they are not pushing parents or teachers (though it's very likely that they will), then they will push each other or themselves. Watch kids on a swing-set sometime. Eventually, they will start competing with themselves or each other to see who can swing the highest or jump the farthest from the moving swing. It may not be anti-authoritarian boundary-pushing, but it is boundary-pushing. It may not be safe, but neither is base-jumping or driving a car.